Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext (
Juvino – saving money by routing calls cheaply ..
When I first came to London back in 1999, it was not easy to get a mobile phone connection. All you could get was ‘pay as you go’. And since that was often your only phone (because you did not have a landline as well for the same reason!), you ended up making international calls on it. Both national(cross network) and especially international calls are expensive on many mobile phones
Hence, it was nice to see a company like Juvino launch their product which helps save on national and international calls by routing them over a cheaper network
From their site:
About Juvino
What is Juvino?
Juvino is a new kind of service aimed at helping mobile users save money. It works through the use of some free software that you download onto your phone which then allow you to route calls and text messages through our platform. This means you can easily take advantage of prices that are much lower than those charged by the mobile operators.
Juvino prides itself in being transparent in its pricing, we display the price before you call or send a text so that you can decide whether to go ahead or not. You are charged only for the calls you make or texts you send, there are no subscriptions, lock-ins or hidden charges.
How does it work
We send you the free Juvino software that you download onto your phone. You then open Juvino to make a Juvino call or send a Juvino text. After you enter the number, either directly or from phone memory, we display a price for that call or text. If our price is attractive then simply click call/send.
Voice calls
When you make a Juvino call we route the call via a local access number to the Juvino Gateway and then onto the destination through our network. As far as your mobile operator is concerned you are calling a local fixed line number so you will be charged by your operator at your normal rate, or it will come out of your bundle if you have one. The connection to your dialled number is then completed by us and charged to your Juvino account at the price we have quoted
Texts
When you send a Juvino text it goes via your data service to our message centre. We then deliver the message onto its destination. You will be charged a small amount by your operator for the data connection, on average about 0.4p. The juvino text charge (5p uk and 10p international is charged to your Juvino account. Note that your text recipient receives the message exactly as normal.
Will it work?
Unlike many products I have seen which go looking for a need, Juvino is a product that takes away some ‘pain’ i.e. satisfies a need.
That works in its favour.
The product also works well technically.
However, for it to really take off, it needs an initiat early adopter segment. This has been the tried and tested way for any ‘community based’ software to take off ..
For example, for AOL, the initial target segment was the gay community.
Thus, for juvino, the initial target segment may well be students, immigrants, visitors etc ..
One to watch!
Juvino is also looking for people to beta test the product which you can do so from their site
So, has anyone tried this service? Any comments? I’m thinking of trying it, but not sure. Thanks!
Daniel
http://www.how-2-tile.com/
Comment by Daniel — May 22, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
Great to see Juvino also now in this space. Please don’t hesitate to try Avantimobile.
Comment by Tony Lloyd-Weston — June 7, 2006 @ 1:28 pm
Would be interested to get some customer reviews on this too. Sounds very interesting. What mobile OSs does the software work on?
Comment by free phone fanatic — October 18, 2008 @ 7:48 am